Xara Picture Editor

Xara Picture Editor is a small program that's bundled
with the Xara Xtreme software. Double-click any bitmap inside Xara Xtreme
to summon the Xara Picture Editor--alternatively, Xara Picture Editor also
works independently as a picture viewer and editor on its own.

Once you install Xara Xtreme, Xara Picture Editor
will take over the default file association of all your bitmap formats--I
wish it asked the user before doing that. Yet, for most users Xara
Picture Editor is a great alternative to the built-in Picture Viewer
that comes as part of Windows XP.

As you can see, the Xara Picture Editor interface is very simple and
almost mimics the Windows Picture Viewer interface. But that's where
the similarity ends--Xara Picture Editor offers a range of picture
viewing and editing facilities through live interactive tools which
are at the bottom of the interface as in separate icons (see Figure
2)

Figure 2: All the Xara Picture Editor tools

Here's a list of all the tools, as referenced to the numbers found
in Figure 2.

These set of tools are for opening (Ctrl+o) and saving (Ctrl+S)
images.

This set of navigation buttons is for viewing previous (left arrow
on the keyboard) or next (right arrow on the keyboard) picture file
in the same folder from where the current image is opened. If Xara
Picture Editor is being used from within Xara Xtreme, these controls
wont be activated.

These set of tools control the zooming options for viewing the
image. The three tools are for BestFit (Ctrl+B), Actual Size (Ctrl+A),
and Zoom (Alt+Z). The last tool in this set brings up a small dialog
box that has a live zoom slider (see Figure 3).

This set of tools includes three tools - the leftmost and rightmost
tools rotates the image by 90 degrees clockwise and counter clockwise.
The middle tool opens another dialog box where by using the slider
or by entering a numeric angle, the image can be rotated.

This is the Enhance tool (Ctrl+E) that brings up the Auto Enhance
and manual enhance options. While Auto Enhance does an automatic,
intelligent enhance, the manual option allows control to alter the
brightness, contrast, color saturation, or sharpness of the photos
by dragging the appropriate slider. The Compare button reverts back
to un-enhanced original picture.

This is the plug-in tool that allows you to use installed Photoshop
compatible plug-in effects on the image. A few plug-ins are bundled
within the program--more can be installed.

This tool allows you to crop an image, set the height and the width
for cropping, and move the mouse pointer to the approximate top left
of the area you wish to crop. Click the left mouse button and drag
down to the right to create a crop rectangle and crop the image.

Red eye is a common problem caused by camera flashes. Xara Picture
Editor provides an intuitive way to tackle this issue--just click
in the center of the eye pupil and drag outwards until you are done.

The 3D BumpMap tool can create an interesting textured, 3D light
surface to the photos.

The Delete tool is used for deleting the image.

The Send to Windows Picture Viewer lets you send the open image
to the Windows Picture Viewer.

The Edits tool provides a complete list of edits you've done on
an image so far. It also lets you to alter the settings of edits
by selecting it from the list and by clicking 'Edit' button or remove
the edit entirely, by clicking 'Remove' button. It's a great way
to undo.